Talk:Pelican crossing

Comments
AFAIK, called "pelican" for PEdestrian LIght Control. needs checking -- Tarquin — Preceding undated comment added 14:11, 16 December 2002‎
 * No, they've definitely also been Pelicon crossings &mdash; see Google and try to ignore the links that have come straight from this article &mdash; which suggests (to me, at least) 'schwa elision' as the reason for Pelican. It was only on reading this article recently that I realised the A wasn't a misspelling! :o) &mdash; OwenBlacker 21:24, Jul 9, 2004 (UTC)

The crossing should be called "Pelicon", but because it sounds like Pelican and Pelicon isn't in the dictionary or spellcheckers, it has become known as Pelican. The UK highways agency or DETR call it Pelicon. Will find references later. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.179.224.204 (talk • contribs) 20:58, 6 January 2005 (UTC)

The law
In Germany crossing on a red man can attract a fine wheras in the UK it's up to the pedestiran risking it and if there is no traffic a person will cross on a "red man". Any info on different juristrictions would be interesting. Dainamo 00:20, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Anecdote
In a small town in Colorado, I overheard a youngish mother telling her kids: "The Dude means go and The Hand means stop" Pedant {{subst:undated|21:04, 4 February 2005 (UTC)}

Usage outside UK?
Is the term "pelican crossing" ever used outside the UK? I moved from the UK to the US two years ago, and have never heard the expression here (perhaps partly because pedestrian-controlled traffic signals are very rare here). Probably most people would use the term "crosswalk", as with other pedestrian crossings.

If the term is unique to the UK (or some other English-speaking coutries?), the article should say so. Mtford 07:40, 4 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't believe it's used anywhere in the US. Perhaps other Commonwealth countries?


 * Atlant 18:47, 4 June 2006 (UTC)


 * It certainly wasn't "the first definitive pedestrian light controlled crossing" in the U.S. and its introduction here (in the U.S.) was much earlier than 1969. I remember them from my earliest youth and I was born in 1954. None of the "pelican", "panda", "zebra", "toucan", etc. names have ever been used anywhere I've lived in the U.S. They were all just crosswalks or "the light". There may be official Dept. of Transportation designations that I'm unaware of. I'll see if I can't find something. This reminds me of a kid's joke my brother told me once (before 1969!) -- "Hey, Mom! I'm at the corner of Walk and Don't Walk. Can you come pick me up?"
 * I use the term "pelican crossing" to refer to an intersection in British Columbia with a flashing green traffic signal, because that means only pedestrians can control the light. --  Denelson83  23:03, 19 September 2006 (UTC)


 * This article should be specifically about Pelican crossings &mdash; as such I am about to remove general discussion about other forms of pedestrian crossings, especially those not in the UK. There is a separate pedestrian crossing which is more appropriate. --Lost tourist (Talk) 16:45, 6 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, I have seen such a name also in Cyprus several times and made a photo. I first thought it is a spelling error (pedestrian crossing?). 212.77.163.104 (talk) 12:33, 21 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes, in Malta they're also called pelican crossings; at least, when English is used, but likely the English phrase would be used when talking Maltese (a language that I don't speak, so this is an educated guess). So the phrase "The term pelican crossing is used only in the United Kingdom [...]" is definitely false. Heck, as a good little former colony, we even have the exact same control panels. SeverityOne (talk) 21:36, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

The article states "Usage of pelican crossings is confined mainly to Great Britain, where they were invented, and in Ireland." I'm not sure whether this should be altered. I know that they are used extensively in Australia and have been for many years and almost always with an audible and tactile alert for visually and audibly impaired pedestrians. It's likely, although I have no experience of this, that they are used in New Zealand as well. Can't say I'd ever heard the term "Pelican crossing" used before coming to the UK though. FREON101 (talk) 07:10, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

sometimes beeps?
Pelican type crossings sometimes have further non-visual indication that it is safe to cross, such as a beep

Don't they all beep, or is it a regional (/council) based thing? I have lived in a number of different areas around England, I don't remember using one without a beep. --86.179.186.239 (talk) 02:01, 2 April 2010 (UTC)
 * If a Pelican Crossing doesn't beep it usually means it's one of two, such as typically across a dual carriageway. In UK law these are regarded as simply one crossing even if the crossing is staggered.  For crossings that are small enough where you can make it across on one change, they should beep.


 * Apparently there is a rotating twiddley type thing under the pedestrian control box that achieves the same effect regardless of whether the crossing beeps or not, which is something I didn't know until about ten minutes ago. NKTP (talk) 20:51, 5 January 2011 (UTC)


 * "rotating twiddley type thing". I just can't get to grips with all these technical terms. 109.156.49.202 (talk) 13:25, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

"Incorrectly" called pelican?
Someone ought to tell the publishers of the Highway Code! Kevin McE (talk) 18:05, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

1969
The article says


 * The Pelican crossing was the first definitive light controlled crossing for pedestrians in the UK, introduced in 1969

although the date is not given a citation. But the OED's earliest entry for the term is from the Evening Standard of 26 May 1966:


 * We hope the Ministry will install ‘pelicans’..in the town. Pelicans would be safer than zebras and easily understood by the public—the pedestrian just pushes a button which operates red, amber and green lights telling motorists when to stop.

Can anyone explain the three-year gap? Marnanel (talk) 14:16, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

I think I have found the answer. The modern-style Pelican crossing was indeed launched in 1969. But it seems that the name (with a minor spelling difference) had been knocking around the Ministry of Transport for several years:

"'The term 'Pelicon', an abbreviation of PEdestrian LIght CONtrolled crossing, had been used as shorthand in Ministry correspondence as early as 1965 when the Panda's replacement was first being discussed. But when it was launched in 1967, a more snappy name was required, and the white cross on the traffic signal led to the X-way. When it came to the 1969 relaunch, the white cross light and the cross on the road surface had been ditched, and in April 1968, JP Morris astutely noted that 'the name X-ways seems a bit odd now that the X has gone from the lights... No zoological names!''"

TomH (talk) 05:59, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

X-Way
The "X-way crossing" to which this page refers was a short-lived development of the earlier panda crossing. See http://www.cbrd.co.uk/histories/pedestriancrossings/5.shtml.

Making the words "X-way crossing" into a link is not very helpful, as there is no Wikipedia page for the X-way crossing. Instead X-way crossing goes to a disambiguation page which states that the term refers either to a "predecessor to the pelican crossing" (redirecting us back to where we started) or to a pedestrian scramble - which is an entirely different type of crossing.

So the link does not provide any more information than is already on this page. That being the case, it seems pointless to even have a link - "X-way crossing" might as well just be ordinary text.

TomH (talk) 06:05, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

UK name
I've never heard of this being called a "pelican" crossing (I'm from Europe, but not UK). AFAIK it's simply called a zebra crossing with traffic lights. 93.136.47.163 (talk) 06:16, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * It looks like Australia uses the term. This needs a source about how the crossings are named around the world, rather than one person extrapolating from their own local observations. --Lord Belbury (talk) 09:58, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * It will be hard to find sources to prove that a concept does NOT exist in other countries. IMO evidence should instead be provided for the claim that other countries do use this name. 93.142.105.199 (talk) 04:25, 27 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes. Which is why the article shouldn't make the claim that no country in the world apart from UK and Australia uses this term, when no evidence is available and it's hard to verify. "In some countries outside of the UK and Australia" is at least anecdotally confirmable for now. --Lord Belbury (talk) 10:54, 4 December 2020 (UTC)
 * If I were to assert that the animal donkey is called "donkey" in every human language in the donkey article, surely you agree it wouldn't be up to you to dig up a Mongolian dictionary to delete that claim, right? The sentence you want to be in the article and the [citation needed] next to it, suggest that we are to presume until proven wrong that this English language term, which is a pun understandable solely in the English language, is somehow recognizable in every country on Earth. The skeptical stance is to presume that the term is not defined in countries other than those for which proof is provided. 93.136.27.205 (talk) 05:35, 5 December 2020 (UTC)